The writings of Cicero are littered with hundreds of quotations of Latin poetry—passages from epic verse, tragedy, comedy, satire, and farce, ranging from sequences of multiple lines to the merest snippets, many from unknown figures and unknown works. Considered together, this huge and disparate body of evidence presents a series of challenges and possible interpretative approaches. What do these quotations tell us about the early Latin poets? What do they say about the status of early Latin poetry in the literary and intellectual culture of the late Roman republic? Are there significant patterns to be uncovered that in turn might shed fresh light on Cicero’s own preoccupations with Roman history, the honour and refinement of the past, and the preservation of tradition and cultural memory through the written word?
In this highly stimulating book, Čulík-Baird first draws attention to a long scholarly tradition of excerpting the quotations in the collection of fragments of early Latin poets whose works have not survived: Cicero is invaluable for recovering the poetry of Ennius, Pacuvius, Accius, Lucilius, and others. The importance of quotation for preserving fragments is discussed helpfully in the introduction, together with methodological issues that an editor must address concerning things like misquotation, paraphrase, and ambiguous or mistaken attribution. There are also excellent appendices at the end of the book that gather all the relevant evidence into clear and easy-to-use tables. Each quotation is listed first by Ciceronian work (so you can find all the examples in De finibus, for instance), and then by cited author (so you can find all the examples of Pacuvius across all of Cicero’s works, for instance), with cross references to earlier editions of fragments. These tables will be an invaluable resource for scholars wanting to access this material quickly (there is also a list of quotations of Greek poets, for good measure). But a sustained critical account of how Cicero’s quotations have figured in various iterations of ‘fragments of the early Latin poets’ is not (thankfully) the main focus throughout. As Čulík-Baird makes clear in the following chapters, Cicero’s quotations of the early Latin poets lend themselves to much more than that.
A substantial chapter, ‘Cicero and the poets’, shifts attention firmly to Cicero—who, of course, is the one doing the quoting for one reason or another. Čulík-Baird provides some statistics that help to organise the unwieldy mass of material: Cicero favours some authors over others, with Ennius figuring most prominently with hundreds of citations, and tragedy is the most commonly cited genre across all the genres of his own work. Such statistical patterns demand explanation, and Čulík-Baird offers some compelling suggestions. The prevalence of quotations from tragedy across genres, for example, is linked to the contemporary performance of old Latin classics—as a feature of popular culture, quotations from tragedy might be more readily appreciated; and Ennius is presented as ‘the window through which Cicero could glimpse famous and venerated Romans from generations past’—by quoting Ennius, Cicero could bring that past, with its superior men and its superior values, vividly into the present (this is one of Cicero’s favourite things to do, hence a prevalence of Ennian quotations). Close readings of telling examples of poetic quotation develop such insights in further detail, while remaining sensitive to the diversity and elasticity of Cicero’s citation practice. Unsurprisingly, Cicero tailors his choices to best suit a particular context, and it is a virtue of the book that Čulík-Baird keeps these particularities and the wider context of the Ciceronian texts firmly in view throughout. On the whole the analysis on display is careful and persuasive, but there are occasionally some jarring moments. For example, the interpretation of Cicero’s use of Homeric quotation when discussing his friendship with Pompey in a letter to Atticus from early 49 bce (Att. 9.5.3) is difficult to maintain: ‘Cicero’s De amicitia (22) had emphasized the innate importance of reciprocity in friendship. … In the letter to Atticus, Cicero extends his theorization of friendship as dependent on “mutual goodwill” (mutua beneuolentia) to its logical end via the Iliadic model’ (pp.65–66). But De amicitia was composed in 44 bce, some five years later. More plausible, perhaps, would be the reverse: that the lived experiences of the civil wars and the pressures of navigating highly fraught questions of duty and obligation in friendships with men such as Pompey, dramatically illustrated to Atticus by, among other things, the quotation of Homeric poetry, informed Cicero’s later theorising in the De amicitia. In this chapter there is also some interesting discussion of Cicero’s Latin translation of Greek poets and the practice behind his citation method—did he rely on memory or use books, did he copy quotations found in other sources, did he check the accuracy of his quotations? The exploration of these questions is illuminating, in particular on Cicero’s habit of essentially cutting and pasting quotations of poets that he found in other sources.
The longest chapter of the book, ‘Poetic citation by Ciceronian genre’, focuses attention on the ways in which Cicero employs poetry as a resource when pursuing his own agenda in three distinct genres: philosophical works, oratory and speeches, and letters. The section on philosophy opens with a brisk survey of what Plato, Aristotle, and the Stoics have to say about the practice of poetic citation, particularly for ethical purposes. Čulík-Baird then shows that they all influence Cicero, whose own quotes of Greek poetry are often taken from philosophical sources, notably Stoic sources, and repurposed given the demands of his own Roman cultural context. Like the Greek philosophers, Cicero also often uses poetic quotation as an effective way to illustrate moral lessons. In the sections on oratory and speeches, it is noted that ‘Roman rhetorical training frequently engaged with poetic exemplars’, and a number of examples are examined to show various ways in which Cicero quotes the early Latin poets as an effective persuasive strategy in speeches of different kinds. The letters, however, show a ‘more casual side to poetic engagement’. The examples discussed show poetic quotation as a congenial means for the Roman elite to convey wit and humour, as well as refinement and good taste. Quoting poetry to each other signals shared membership of a literary and intellectual culture, where the “game” of the brilliantly apt quotation is much appreciated. As such, the quotation of poetry in the letters is an important part of urbanitas. All in all, the close readings of specific examples in their immediate context are a real highlight of the book as a whole, clearly showcasing Cicero’s skill and versatility in wielding poetic material for persuasive and artistic effect.
The final shorter chapters shift the focus to other topics. ‘Comedy and scholarship’ examines the ways in which Cicero uses comic verse to explore grammatical and philosophical questions, including the nature of good Latinity and the kind of speech that befits a good Roman man. Here Cicero is situated in a Roman tradition of scholarship on early Latin comic poets, in which his contemporary Varro and their teacher Lucius Aelius Stilo also feature prominently. ‘Singing in Cicero’ looks at the themes of music and musicality, an interesting aspect of Cicero’s citation of early tragic poetry in particular. Here emphasis is placed on the philosophical and moral importance of music, a tradition going back at least to Plato. The final chapter, ‘Poetry as artefact’, shifts attention to Cicero’s preoccupation with Roman history and the mos maiorum. Čulík-Baird notes that ‘we regularly find Cicero engaging with Roman poetry as part of his efforts to understand Roman history’ and that he ‘rooted his historical understanding in poetic sources’. Early Roman poetry, in particular that of Ennius and the satirist Lucilius, was a critical resource for the preservation of Roman cultural memory—Ennius had written about events and personages in Rome’s deep past, and Lucilius had written on his own contemporaries in the second century. Given Cicero’s own keen interest in Roman history and his efforts to enshrine and valorise ancestral values through his own literary endeavours of the 50s and 40s, this is all very fertile territory. Čulík-Baird shows how Cicero used the early Latin poets, in particular Ennius and Lucilius, not only as sources for historical facts and information, but also as resources for composing characters and settings in his own works, which recreate or reimagine Roman history and the “feel” of aristocratic high culture—the way in which illustrious men spoke and interacted with each other. Early Latin poetry, some of it surviving in old physical manuscripts, was not only a stale artefact of this lost culture, it was a living vessel communicating it to the present. Cicero’s own literary efforts can then be seen, at least in part, as an attempt to preserve those sterling ancestral values he saw displayed in the work of the early Latin poets. Čulík-Baird does well in bringing out Cicero’s strong nostalgia for the past as he experienced a cultural or generational shift taking place around him. By the end of the chapter it is evident that the early Latin poets are crucial for his efforts to preserve that past, to bring earlier Roman figures to life; by quoting them he could charge his own works with their authority and even rekindle some of the old magic.
A short envoi emphasises Cicero’s importance in keeping alive the words of the early Latin poets for posterity. There is no conclusion that brings the different chapters together to make an overarching argument. Instead, the chapters and the various close readings within them suffice to demonstrate the importance of poetry ‘as an ethical, historical, and linguistic resource in the late Roman republic’ (to quote the book’s blurb), although this is a thesis against which few would have argued. More significantly, the chapters provide a demonstration not only of the scope and sophistication of Cicero’s practice in quoting poetry (both Greek and Latin) but also of how untangling the details in particular instances can unlock fresh new appreciations of Cicero’s literary and intellectual endeavours. When reading Cicero, it is tempting to breeze through the quotations of poetry without dwelling too much: after reading this engaging and thought-provoking book, which will be of value to all those interested in Cicero and the intellectual culture of the late Roman republic, that will be hard to do.